The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1887-05-04
moral ano Religious.
Child-WidOws I'm India,


The telegram announcing Lord Duff
FERNS decision regarding Hindoo
widow marriages receives emphasis
from the outbursts of fanatical hostility
which are agitating northern India
The decision arrived at is character
istic alike of the statesman who now
presides over India and of the new
point of view from which the Indian
government regards questions of in
ternal reform. Lord Dufferin expresses
a genuine sympathy for the party of
progress, but he does not allow his sym
patty to blind him to the grave polti-
cal difficulties of the case. There are
over 100000 of widows in India
and 100000 of them belong to castles
who practice child-marriage and insist
on the celibacy of their widows. These
customs are not enforced with equal
rigor in all parts of India nor among
all the castles who follow them. But.
broadly speaking, there are about
100000 Indian women of good family
who are condemned to life of pen
ance or of shame. This, however, is a
very mild statement of the case, for
it must be remembered that the cruelty
of enforced widowhood in India is az
gravated by the circumstance that vast
number of widows have only been
wives in name. In Bengal 271 Hindoo
girls out of every / 900 between the
ages of five and ten are married, and
no fewer than 666 are returned as mar
ried between the ages of ten and four
teen. This applies to the general Hin
doc population. But among the higher
castles, who enforce the celibacy of their
widows, the proportion is much higher.
Practically every Hindoo girl of good
caste is either wife or widow before
she reaches the age of fourteen. In
thousands, indeed in hundreds of
thousands of cases, the child has never
known what it is to be a wife. 1t is
essential for the honor of Hindoo
family of good caste that it should
contain no unmarried daughter of ma
ture years. The existence of such
daughter is not only social disgrace
but a religious crime. When, there
fore, female infant is born the first
idea in her fathers mind is not one of
pleasure, nor perhaps regret, but simply
how to find husband for her. 1t is
not necessary that she should become a
wife in our sense of the word. 1t suf-
fees that she should be given in mar
riage, and 90 through the ceremony of
the Seven Steps, which completes the
religious rite. Aged Brahmins of good
family still 60 about the country marry
ing, for pecuniary consideration, fe-
male infants, whom they sometimes
never see again. Within the memory
of men still living this abominable prac-
tice was tlourishing trade. A Kulin
Brahman, perhaps white-haired, half
blind and decrepit, went the round of
his beat each spring, going through the
ceremony of marriage with such female
infants as were offered, and pocketing
his fee, and perhaps never returned to
the child's house. So long as he lived
she could marry no other man; when
he died she became widow for life.
The Hindoo child-widow is looked
upon as thing apart and accursed,
bearing the penalty in this world for
sins which she has committed in past
existence. Her hair is cut short, or
her head is shaved altogether; she eX-
changes her pretty childish clothes for
the widows coarse and often squalid
garment; she is forbidden to take part
in any village festival or family gather
ing; the very sight of her is regarded as
an i'll omen. Her natural woman's in
stincts are starved into hamilton by con-
slant fasts, sometimes prolonged to
seventy-two hours. Amid the genial
and ightly-colored life of the Hindoo
family She fits about, disarrayed, silent,
summed, disfgured-in some parts of
India hideously bald bject-forbid-
den all joy and all hope.-London
Times